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Bird's Nest

#wildeastdevon Easter Holiday outdoor activity: Blossom crafts

Find a twig with lots of branches in your garden and add some tissue paper blossom to decorate your home for Easter. We found some tissue paper that had been used in packaging but if you don’t have any you could try using kitchen towel, tissues or just regular paper. See if you can spot any real blossom when you are on your daily walk

Share your blossom crafts with us at @wildeastdevon

Blossom Crafts

#wildeastdevon Easter Holiday outdoor activity: Blossom crafts

Find a twig with lots of branches in your garden and add some tissue paper blossom to decorate your home for Easter. We found some tissue paper that had been used in packaging but if you don’t have any you could try using kitchen towel, tissues or just regular paper. See if you can spot any real blossom when you are on your daily walk

Share your blossom crafts with us at @wildeastdevon

Caterpillar Game

#WildEastDevon Outdoor Activity: The Caterpillar Game

Share your Caterpillar Game pictures with us @wildeastdevon

Cress Heads

#wildeastdevon Easter Holidays outdoor activity: cress hair for an egghead!

You will need to keep your growing cress on a sunny windowsill and water little and often- it doesn’t want to dry out but neither does it want to swim! The seeds should start to sprout in a few days and be ready to eat in a couple of weeks when you can give your egg a haircut and make yourself a tasty egg and cress sandwich. If you don’t have cress seeds at home you can often find them in the supermarket. Alternatively you could use grass seeds if you have them in the shed- great for hair and haircuts but not so good for eating!

Share your cressheads with us @wildeastdevon

Egg Dying

Wild East Devon Easter Outdoor Activity: Egg Dying

In today’s Easter holiday activity we are dying eggs. Go out foraging for interestingly shaped small leaves to lay over your eggs. Once held in place using old tights the leaves stop any dye from reaching the egg and so leave a silhouette when removed. Boiling the eggs wrapped in onion skins dyes the eggs a darker brown or you could use red cabbage which dyes the eggs blue (I didn’t have any at home to demonstrate this). Alternatively submerge the eggs in a strong solution of food dye or the insides of felt pens soaked in water. Try dying several eggs with different leaves and colours to make a lovely Easter display...

Send us pics of your dyed eggs @wildeastdevon

Gruffalo Crumble

#WildEastDevon Outdoor Activity: make Gruffalo Crumble in your garden

Share your Gruffalo Crumble with us @wildeastdevon

Heart Willow Weaving

Happy Valentines Day to everyone in wild East Devon. Why not get crafty with this amazing willow heart. Make at home and give as a gift.

Ice Eggs

#wildeastdevon Easter Holidays activity: Ice eggs

Ice eggs never fail to engage the curiosity of children of any age. The activity works best with a bit of set up. Maybe tell the children about a mythical ice bird that has been seen recently flying high above the area (could the reduction in traffic and people outside have encouraged it out of its usual seclusion?). Then sneak out and hide the eggs in a nest in the garden for the children to find for themselves... or maybe put the eggs into nests that the children have made on a previous day. Makes a change from the Easter bunny!

Share your photos with us @wildeastdevon

Imaginary Creatures

#WildEastDevon #outdooractivity for your garden: Imaginary Creatures

In today’s ‘outdoor learning in the garden’ activity we are getting creative and inventing our own creatures. Let your imagination run wild; your creature could live in your garden, in a magical realm or even in outer space! Think about it’s habitat, food, predators, special adaptations and home. Why not run your own ‘care of magical creatures’ class or write a fact sheet or story about your creatures?

Share your creatures with us @wildeastdevon

Incredible Objects

Wild East Devon Outdoor Learning for your garden: Incredible Objects 

There are incredible and magical objects to be found in your garden. You just have to find them and use your imagination to work out what they are. You could link this to a favourite story or topic from Harry Potter to fairies or even dinosaurs... Make your museum from home!

Share your unbelievable objects with us @wildeastdevon

Leaf Flag

Map Making

In this edition of #wildeastdevon outdoor learning in the garden activity series we are Map Making!

Helpful tips from Ranger Penny: ‘Have a look at some maps of your area first; think about how maps show the area viewed from above and use symbols to represent features. To add to the challenge measure the garden (with a tape measure or by pacing it out) and draw your map to scale. Use your map for hiding treasure (pirate outfits optional!), setting up trails or marking where you spot different creatures or plants.’

Good luck!

Share your maps with us @wildeastdevon

Minibeast Bingo

#WildEastDevon Outdoor Activity: Minibeast Bingo

Go on a minibeast safari in your garden. How many types of minibeasts (or invertebrates as they are called by scientists) can you find? Different types of creatures live in different habitats so be sure to search high and low- from up in hedges to under pots and even underground! You could draw some of the bugs that you find or even make your own ID guide for the minibeasts in your garden. Remember that minibeasts are living creatures so always treat them gently and once you’ve had a good look at them return them to where you found them. If you are shaking bushes or hedges be sure that no birds are nesting in them.

Share your pictures with us @wildeastdevon

Mother's Day Flower Crafts

Natural Kim's Game

#WildEastDevon Outdoor Activity: Natural Kim’s Game.

A favourite at forest school, Natural Kim’s Game takes only moments to set up and very little equipment (a jumper could be used instead of a cloth). It is a cross between a memory game and scavenger hunt. Younger children can focus on counting their objects whereas with older ones you can include some elements of naming the plants in your garden.

Share your pictures of Natural Kim’s Game with us @wildeastdevon

Natural Repeating Patterns

Wild East Devon Outdoor Activity for your Garden: Repeating Patterns

Use objects that you find in your garden to create some repeating patterns. Can you correctly continue someone else’s pattern?

Share your patterns with us @wildeastdevon

Pitfall Trap

Wild East Devon Outdoor Activity for your garden: Pitfall Trap

Find out what invertebrates are wandering around your garden at night by catching them in a pitfall trap. Try setting traps in different locations (under a hedge, beside some logs or in the flowerbed). Do you think that you will find the same creatures in each trap?

Don’t forget to put a roof over your traps in case it rains and check your traps first thing in the morning so that any creatures that you have caught aren’t in there for too long. After releasing your creatures don’t forget to dig up the pots and fill in the holes.

Share your trap findings with us @wildeastdevon

Potion Making

Wild East Devon outdoor learning in the garden activity: Potion Making 


Today’s video from the Education Rangers is a magical maths lesson. You can adapt the multiplication factors to suit your little wizards and witches. Write a potion and spell book and make a stick wand too. If you don’t have a garden why not collect natural materials on your daily walk to do the activity back at home?

Share your wicked potions with us @wildeastdevon

Real Rainbows

#WildEastDevon Outdoor Activity: make real rainbows in your garden

Share your real rainbows with us @wildeastdevon

Scientific Nests for Mice

Wild East Devon outdoor learning in the garden activity: Scientific Nests For Mice

You could make it a competition between children or one child could make several nests. Whilst doing this science investigation encourage children to make predictions and think about whether the test is fair. Encourage children to talk about the different materials and which might be good at keeping the heat in. You could extend the experiment to consider things like whether it makes a difference if the nests are wet or dry, whether the nest material or thickness makes a difference or whether it is better for your nest to be on or off the ground. Maybe it would make a difference if there were more than one mouse in the nest?

Share pictures of your findings with us @wildeastdevon

Spring Diary

Spring is a perfect time to see changes in the garden: leaves growing, flowers opening, bees and butterflies emerging and birds collecting nesting materials. Today’s outdoor learning in the garden’ activity is to start keeping a record to track the signs of spring in your garden or on your daily walk

Share your diaries with us @wildeastdevon

Springtime Wand

Stick Friend Adventures

#WildEastDevon Outdoor Activity: have adventures with your home-made stick friends

Share your craft masterpieces with us @wildeastdevon

Stick Skeleton

#WildEast Devon Outdoor Learning for your garden activity: Stick Skeleton

Once you've made a person, try and make an animal, or a dinosaur!

Sundial

#WildEastDevon Outdoor Activity: make a sundial

Share your craft masterpieces with us @wildeastdevon

Symmetry Crafts

#WildEastDevon Outdoor Activity: learn about symmetry through crafts

Share your craft masterpieces with us @wildeastdevon

The Senses

Water Filters

 

#WildEastDevon Outdoor Activity: Have a go at creating a water filter

You could use a funnel if you have one or improvise with an old plastic bottle cut in half. You could make it a competition or Investigate how well different materials remove the particles of soil from the water. Does it make a difference how thick the layers of materials are? Can you get your water cleaner by filtering it twice? Can some particles be removed simply by allowing the mixture to settle? Would the water be safe to drink? Could there be impurities that we can’t see (e.g. microbes and chemicals)? Find out how these can be removed...

Share your pictures with us @wildeastdevon

Weather Vane

#WildEastDevon Outdoor Activity: make a weather vane

Which way is the wind blowing today? Make your own weather vane in your garden and find out!

Share your craft masterpieces with us @wildeastdevon

Windy Day Mobiles

Wild East Devon Outdoor Learning for your garden: Windy Day Mobiles

Next time there is a breezy day get out into the garden to make a mobile. Watch how different objects move; which move things about the most? Which keep swinging for the longest once the wind has dropped? Are they ever all totally still? If you hang your mobile where you can see it from the house you can use it to see how windy it is before you go outside...

Share pictures of your mobiles with us @wildeastdevon